USDA official Shirley Sherrod has become one of the first targets of right wing news pundits after accusations of Tea Party racism. Republicans asked for a democrat to keep a racist label after Tea Party Express racist Mark Williams got kicked out for it. Sherrod, who’s black, is shown in a video talking about a past experience with a white farmer in the 1980s. A segment of the video was used out of context to portray Sherrod as not giving 100 percent to help the farmer facing bankruptcy.
Shirley Sherrod targeted by Conservatives
After making a video on race, Shirley Sherrod, USDA’s Georgia State Director of Rural Development, resigned. Because Tea Party Express racist Mark Williams was left out, republican bloggers put the video up on display. Fox news told the story. CBS News reports that Sherrod’s remarks were from a speech she gave at an NAACP Freedom Fund Banquet on March 27, in Douglas, Ga. The story talks about a man who was white and needed help with Chapter 12 bankruptcy. She said it was not something she wanted to do since she had to help him keep his land while numerous blacks were losing their land. She ended up referring him to a white lawyer.
Video gets in news- Sherrod quits
Sean Hannity, fan of Tea Party Express, and Fox News played the video for everybody to see, and shortly after, the USDA announced Sherrod’s resignation. “There is zero tolerance for discrimination at USDA, and I strongly condemn any act of discrimination against any person,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a written statement. “We have been working hard through the past 18 months to reverse the checkered civil rights history at the department and take the issue of fairness and equality very seriously.”
Every little thing else in the video of Sherrod
Sherrod said the video clip getting used against her doesn’t tell the whole story. She argues that since the video was long before her job at the USDA, it isn’t the whole story, reports CNN. In 1985, Sherrod, who has a master’s degree in community development, served as Director of the Georgia State Office for the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund, which works to help family farmers retain and develop their property. She was only telling the story so individuals could see how she had moved on and to encourage them to move past race also. The white lawyer didn’t even help the farmer so she “had to frantically discover a lawyer who would file a Chapter 11 to stop the foreclosure.”. The family of the farmer became family friends of hers throughout the process.
Citations
CBS News
cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20011026-503544.html
Sean Hannity
americanprogress.org/issues/kfiles/b91585.html
CNN
edition.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/07/20/agriculture.employee.naacp/#fbid=w2XX2duDWrt
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